


Goodness Alone Is Never Enough

by violet_storms



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Compliant, Character Death, Character Study, Non-Graphic Violence, Women In Power, literally screamed at the screen at the end of turn turn turn, victoria deserved better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:28:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27910762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violet_storms/pseuds/violet_storms
Summary: Victoria seldom smiled as a child, and her mother used to say that when she did, it was only because she had won something.Victoria means victory,she used to say.You are victory. You cannot lose.Victoria would shake her head.“I can, though,” she would say. “I can, if I let people down."
Relationships: Victoria Hand & S.H.I.E.L.D.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Goodness Alone Is Never Enough

**Author's Note:**

> _“But goodness alone is never enough. A hard, cold wisdom is required for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.”_  
>  ― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

_Victoria Hand knows the end when she sees it, and this is the end. You can survive a bullet to the chest, but not one to the head, and as Ward levels the gun at her, she looks him in the eyes and she thinks, haven’t I proven myself enough already?_

_She has half-risen from the floor when the gun goes off again._

Victoria seldom smiled as a child, and her mother used to say that when she did, it was only because she had won something. _Victoria means victory,_ she used to say. _You are victory. You cannot lose._ Victoria would shake her head.

“I can, though,” she would say. “I can, if I let people down.”

Victoria was never much of a team player, but she was always a leader. She constantly earned her group a perfect score during group projects, she never failed to pass a resolution in Model UN, and the school’s math club elected her president every year she was there. _She’ll be someone someday,_ a teacher once told her mother, and her mother smiled, half-proud, half-bored.

 _I’m sure she will,_ she said, and Victoria looked up from across the room and tried not to let the weight of expectation curl her shoulders too far forward.

Victoria Hand knows pressure. She’s as familiar with it as an old friend, the tightness in her chest, the rapid beating of her heart. She is cool under it, or at least she works very hard to make people think she is, but as soon as the lights go down and the cameras shut off she feels like screaming and crying and shaking to pieces, and once or twice she actually does. She knows the other kind of pressure too, the pressure to become, to fulfill, the pressure potential brings. _Prove yourself,_ they tell her over and over. _Prove you’ve earned this, prove you are what you say, prove you can do something with it._ “And why should I?” she says. “When does it end? When am I enough?”

 _Never,_ the answer echoes back. _For the crime of potential, you will always have something to prove._

So she tries. Victoria is bright, and she’s focused, and she’s committed, but it doesn’t take long to learn that isn’t enough, you need other things: luck, and money, and more likability than she’s ever had. In the end, eight years studying mathematics and statistics and logistics gets her up to being an accountant. _An accountant at S.H.I.E.L.D.,_ people say, the people she bothers to tell. _At least it’s an exciting place._ But if anything, that makes it worse.

 _I am here,_ she thinks, _and I am so close, and I’m typing numbers into a computer when I could be making a difference._ Then her mother’s voice whispers in her head.

_So what are you going to do about that, Victoria?_

And it turns out this is not the end at all.

Victoria is still not a team player. She doesn’t like people and they don’t like her back, and none of them bother to make that a secret. But Victoria is still a leader, and still a good leader, and you don’t have to like someone to respect them. She earns that from them, one step at a time, and she steps higher and higher: accountant to agent, agent to operative, operative to level eight.

Victoria Hand knows the system. She knows it as well as she knows herself, because she’s built it inside her, a map running from the tips of her fingers to the scar on her heart. This is what makes her up, what defines her. The chain of command, the levels, the missions, the purpose. Victoria is an agent above all else. Some people call her cold, unfeeling, a buzzkill, a hardass, bossy, domineering, bitch. Victoria couldn’t care less, because at the end of the day she gets the job done, and she gets it done well, and no one's denying that. No one can.

Victoria Hand knows power. It runs in her veins and rushes in her lungs, and she’d be lying if she said she didn’t enjoy it, the intoxication of authority. And she’d be lying if she said it didn’t scare her, because she knows what power does to people, what power could do to her—but she holds on anyway, because this is hers, this is what she is owed. There is still a little rebellion in her, though, the remnants of the girl who hated being asked to prove herself over and over. Victoria is going on forty, and she keeps bright red streaks in her hair. When people dare to ask why, she says, “because they make people ask me stupid questions, so I can tell whether or not they’re worth my time.”

Or she says, “because I can.”

Or if you’re lucky, she tells part of the truth and says, “because they don’t own me.”

(The other reason is simple. Victoria likes the way they look.)

Victoria has proven herself many times, in many ways, done more than some other agents can imagine. _You took two in the gut,_ Garrett told Skye when she got her badge. _More than Sitwell here’s ever done._ He only points out Sitwell, and he’s right to do it. The other level eights have taken bullets before. Victoria has taken bullets before. One in her shoulder and one in the side and one inches from her heart, the one that almost killed her.

Victoria Hand knows death. She’s seen it, she’s felt it, she’s lost agents to it, and she fears it like any reasonable person does. Victoria trusts the system, but she doesn’t trust anything else. She doesn’t trust Coulson when he returns from the dead, doesn’t trust the way people flock like sheep around him. No single agent can be that special.

But she works with him anyway, depends on him anyway, because above all else, this is what Victoria knows: S.H.I.E.L.D. comes first. Victoria Hand knows her duty. She carries it with her, the knife in her belt, the weight on her back. _These are my orders, this is my mission. This is what it means to matter, to serve something you believe in, something greater than yourself. This is what the system is, and this is what it earns you._

Victoria Hand trusts the system, and it betrays her, but she loves it anyway. She is an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., and she dies in the course of duty, in the line of fire, on the cold hard floor after one shot to the chest and two to the head. Ward has a gun leveled at her and Victoria looks him in the eyes because it is not her nature to look away. It never has been. _Victoria means victory,_ she hears as blood wells in her chest, and she can’t tell if her mother’s voice is speaking or her own. _Victoria means victory, you are victory, you are not allowed to lose._

 _But this isn’t losing,_ she tells herself as she hears the click of the trigger being pulled, as she holds onto eye contact and does not, does not, does not look away. _I will not beg, I will not scream, I will die rising._

_This is victory too._

**Author's Note:**

> _“Victory in defeat, there is none higher. She didn't give up, Ben; she's still trying to lift that stone after it has crushed her…”_


End file.
